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Unlike many of Poe’s murderous first-person narrators, the narrator of “The Black Cat” has a root cause for his violence in his debilitating alcoholism. Although the narrator describes a gradual deterioration of his kindness, moving from language to physical abuse to murder, within the story his switch to monstrous tyrant happens within the span of a paragraph. The structural suddenness and completeness of the change emphasizes alcohol’s destructive power as it destroys his empathy and inhibitions. Alcohol first makes the narrator more selfish. When he merely believes Pluto has begun to avoid him, he roughly grabs Pluto, attempting to force intimacy. The narrator describes himself as having been tender-hearted, which implies sensitivity toward others. Instead of eroding his sensitivity, alcohol turns his sensitivity inward toward himself. Thus, feeling rejected by Pluto makes him lash out. In addition, alcohol destroys the narrator’s inhibitions. He states he kills Pluto out of perversity, because he knows it’s wrong, and implies that all people have perverse desires. Whether or not this is true, that he believes it’s true suggests he’s had perverse desires all along but was restrained by his morality. With his inhibitions destroyed by alcohol, he has no internal checks to stop the escalation of violence.
Of note is the way the narrator’s wife appears less important to him than his animals. She is the first target of his violence. Murdering Pluto shocks the narrator to his core and makes him remorseful enough to bring home another cat. After murdering his wife, the narrator barely registers her loss. Some critics have read the narrator’s attitude toward his wife as him considering her another pet, and a less beloved one at that. However, it’s also possible that he values animals more than people. At the beginning of the tale, he mentions, “There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.” Thus, he considers his wife less loyal, less loving, and therefore, less of a friend to him than his pets. In this light, the narrator appears to confuse obedience, or at least, a willingness to put up with any behavior from him, as true love. Indeed, the narrator does not turn violent against Pluto until he imagines Pluto’s unconditional love has waned.
